To Add To The Mystery

     The biggest mystery in the Social Security world is what is happening with the rate at which claims for Social Security disability benefits are being filed. There was a big run-up between about 2008 and  2010 followed by a prolonged decline. Various theories have been propounded but no one has a good handle on this. No, declines in unemployment cannot be the only explanation. If that were the case, the decline would have ended some time ago.

     Jeffrey Schuh and Richard Leavitt gave a presentation to the Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods of the Social Security Advisory Board on Disability Insurance: The Private Sector. It included the table shown below. LTD means Long Term Disability, that is private insurance, mostly an employee benefit. It's not stated in the presentation but I think EP stands for Elimination Period, that is the length of time after disability begins before LTD payments begin. EP-90 is a 90 day elimination period and EP-180 is a 180 day elimination period.

    

     Note that this table would not include anyone laid off since they would not be eligible for LTD as an employee benefit. These would mostly be white collar jobs since blue collar employees aren't  often covered by LTD, unless they're union workers and maybe not then.

     This table shows a very significant decline in disability claims in a group that was little affected by unemployment rates and which was unaffected by circumstances at Social Security, at least in the rate at which they filed LTD claims. This is a table of the incidence rate per one thousand so birth rates in the 1960s are irrelevant. In general, this table just adds to the mystery.

Don’t Do The Crime If You Can’t Do The Time

     From the Palm Beach Post:

 A conservative media commentator who was crowned Mrs. Florida 2016 is headed to prison after a federal judge on Thursday said he wanted to send a message that if you steal from the U.S. government, you're going to jail. 

Unless Karyn Turk can convince an appeals court that she doesn't deserve to spend a month behind bars for stealing her elderly mother's Social Security checks instead of using the money to pay for nursing home care, the Highland Beach, Fla., resident must report to prison on March 2. ... 

Since pleading guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge of Social Security fraud, she has been attacked on social media, said her attorney David Tarras. 

Turk, who last year was named champion of the year by Best Buddies, a teen mentoring group, has lost her position on various philanthropic groups, he said. 

The damage to her reputation and her status in political, business and social circles has been enormous, he said. ... 

Without the ability to hob-nob in the community, travel to interview celebrities for YouTube broadcasts and to host fundraisers, like those she held for now convicted political operative Roger Stone, her career is dead, he said. 

"Her livelihood is based on networking and being a social media commentator," Tarras said. 

Besides, he argued, she came to court with a check for $46,000 to reimburse the government for the money she stole. That, he said, should be enough.

Reinhart [the judge] disagreed. While noting that Turk had lived an otherwise law-abiding life and done good works, he said her crime was a serious one. She shouldn't be able to "buy her way out of jail" by simply writing a check, he said. ...

Proposal Under Consideration Would Increase Grid Rules By Five Years

     The Wall Street Journal article on the plan to alter Social Security’s grid regulations used in determining disability is now available outside the paywall. Here are some excerpts:

... “Evidence shows that in the modern economy the vocational impacts of age, education and work experience are markedly different from what they were when we published the current vocational regulations,” according to the text dated Oct. 18. ... 

The proposed rule ... would no longer assume age seriously affects a person’s ability to adapt to simple, entry-level work. It would raise the age at which education and work experience are considered in determining eligibility to 55, from 50. The new rule would also update data on occupational skills that the agency uses to determine eligibility, based on new information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. ... 

A person familiar with the proposal said it has been a top priority for some Social Security Administration officials, who have met at least twice a month with White House and OMB officials. While some of those officials have embraced potential changes to vocational factors, others were concerned the agency hasn’t yet provided enough data or analysis to support the rule change, the person said. ...

     When we heard of this idea before during the George W. Bush administration the rumor was of a three year increase in the age categories, not a five year increase. This new proposal seems in line with the maximalist instincts of the Trump Administration. 

Trump Plan To Make It Harder To Get Social Security Disability

     The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump Administration is working on a plan to make it harder to qualify for Social Security disability benefits, apparently by revising the grid regulations. The paper says it has seen a copy of the draft.

     You have to wonder who leaked this. Was it someone in the Trump Administration proud of the plan? The fact that this appeared in the Wall Street Journal suggests that. That's crazy since this is bound to be unpopular with far more people than it's popular with. It's also possible that this was leaked by an opponent who wants to make it clear what the stakes will be in this November's election although that seems unlikely. You have to wonder if this, like the assassination in Iraq, is an attempt to curry favor with an impeachment juror.

     In any case, there's virtually zero chance this will happen before the election. The provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act make that essentially impossible. Also, Social Security would have to allow publication of the new Occupational Information System it's been keeping under wraps. The agency's website suggests that's not imminent.

Initial And Recon Allowance Rates

     Social Security has posted numbers on the disability claim allowance rates in each state at the initial and reconsideration levels of review. Note the disparities. Click on each page to view full size.

Well-Meaning Advice Can Still Be Misleading

    Tom Margenau has written a syndicated column giving advice on dealing with Social Security. Mostly I agree with him but the column is an example of how something that is good advice for most people can be misleading for others.

     Margenau recounts complaints from Social Security employees about claimants who call in to file claims for widows benefits who haven't bothered to find their husband's Social Security number (SSN) before calling. He says to find it before calling. Great advice for most people but what if you can't find that number? What if you were separated and lack access to any of your late spouse's records? What if you're divorced but were married long enough to get surviving divorced spouse benefits? Are you barred from filing a claim since you lack the SSN? No, you can still file the claim. Social Security can look up the SSN. It's certainly better to save their time by finding the SSN if you can but if you can't Social Security is still prepared to help you file the claim. Margenau goes on to recommend that claimants have not only the SSN but also date of birth, date of marriage, date of divorce  and date of death. I'm pretty sure that while it would be best to have this information that it's not strictly speaking necessary.

     You have to understand that I'm constantly dealing with clients who have already procrastinated for months if not years before filing a Social Security disability claim. Often the reason given for the procrastination is that they were trying to get their information together to file a claim. The claimants often wait to reach out for help from someone like me until they're destitute. That's irrational but people who become disabled often act quite irrationally. Mental illness causes this irrationality but just the dislocation coming from what is often an abrupt change in one's life brings about mental confusion. I wish I had had the opportunity to insist that claimants get on with it before the wolf gets to the door. Dealing with desperate clients who are facing homelessness is wearing. You want to do something for them immediately but while Social Security can expedite adjudication in cases of homelessness or threatened homelessness, it still takes months for a case to proceed through the process. Please, don't encourage procrastination in filing Social Security claims.

A Little Help Needed

     From WSAV:

78-year-old Sheila Conary says it’s been a long seven months in terms of her finances. It started in June of 2019 when she was told by her bank (Wells Fargo) that her account was short.

“I noticed I was getting insufficient funds in my checking account and I thought that can’t be because I’ve got money in there,” Conary told me.

But she was wrong. Four Social Security checks for the months of February, March, April and May had not been electronically deposited as normal. After going to the local Social Security Administration office she was shocked by the information they provided.

“When I went to Social Security they said they couldn’t help me,” said Conary. “They told me I should go to the Bank of America and said my funds had been diverted to an account there, that the change had been set up online by me. I said ‘no I never did that’ and told me I don’t have a Bank of America account.”

She now knows that someone somehow was able to go online to Social Security and change her deposit information. ...

She says seven months later, part of the situation has been resolved, i.e. that as of June her checks went back to her own Wells Fargo account.

“But I’m still missing February, March, April and May (checks) so over $8,000 is still sitting in Bank of America under some account that I didn’t open,” Conary says. ...

     Yes, she should have noticed it earlier but Social Security should have been far more helpful. Why was she initially told Social Security couldn't help her? Why hasn't her money been restored? No, Social Security doesn't have to recover the money before making Ms. Conary whole. This wasn't her fault. Her situation isn't rare. It's happened many thousands of times across the country.

Was Social Security Actually Issuing Decisions On Christmas Day?

     My firm has gotten two or three decisions supposedly issued by Social Security on December 25, 2019. I'd call that a dead giveaway that the dates that the agency puts on decisions are at best an approximation of the date they're actually mailed. I don't think anyone but a few security guards and computer people were working at Social Security that day and no one could have mailed a decision because the mail doesn't run on Christmas day. 

     I think this has to do with centralized printing and mailing. My guess is that the people actually making the decisions just put artificial dates on them assuming they'll be printed and mailed within, let's say, three days after they're ready to go out. Maybe the system does this automatically. Sometimes the printing and mailing people get it out on that date. Sometimes they get it out earlier; sometimes later. Who cares? Claimants have a fixed length of time to file appeals based upon when a decision is mailed. When it comes to appeal rights Social Security takes the dates on its decisions quite literally when it shouldn't

     Why is it that centralized printing and mailing is a good thing anyway?